Introducing: Charles Dickens Ghost Stories - A Christmas Carol

This is a preview of a brand-new audiobook from the Noiser Podcast Network. Join Sir David Suchet as he reads a selection of Charles Dickens’s most chilling short works, brought to life with sound design and original music. We’ll encounter dark premonitions of disaster experienced by a lonely railway signalman… A Victorian murder trial cast into chaos when the dead man’s ghost interrupts proceedings… And a sinister haunted hotel, where twelve identical spirits stalk the corridors… But first, a very special festive gift: Dickens’s most beloved ghost story of all, A Christmas Carol. You can listen to Part 2 of A Christmas Carol straight after this. Just search for Charles Dickens Ghost Stories in your podcast app or listen at www.noiser.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi listeners. Today, we're bringing you a preview of a brand-new series from the Noiser Podcast Network. It's called Charles Dickens' Ghost Stories. Join Sir David Suchet as he performs seven of the great novelist's most spine-tingling tales: stories of haunted houses, vengeful spirits, and dark premonitions of disaster. If you enjoy this taster episode, search for Charles Dickens' Ghost Stories on your podcast app and hit Follow for more episodes, or head to www-noiser.com.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  It's Boxing Day, 1843. And at an elegant townhouse in London, a party is in full swing. Smartly dressed Victorian revelers nibble on mince pies. That's pies containing genuine minced meat, as well as candied orange peel and spices. They chink glasses of hot Negus and smoking Bishop, elaborate mulled wine variants made from sweet, strong port. At one end of the cosy, candle-lit living room, a group of children sit cross-legged on the floor, utterly entranced by what they're seeing.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  A charismatic magician is working through a well-rehearsed routine: pulling coins from behind their ears, baking a plum pudding out of raw eggs and flour in his top hat, even magicking a live guinea pig out of thin air before letting it scurry across the floor. This magician is the host of the party this evening. And it's not the first time that he's transfixed an audience, though usually, it's through another kind of magic entirely. At 31 years old, he is, after all, the most successful writer of the era. His name... is Charles Dickens.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Show over, Dickens puts down his magician's props. He picks up a glass of smoking bishop and settles into an armchair. He looks around the room, surveying his guests. Apparently, there's a new way of sending festive greetings this year, in the form of Christmas cards. How novel! He takes in the men in frock coats gathered around the tall pine tree in the corner, decorated with candles. These festive furs are another relatively recent development, inspired by Queen Victoria's German husband, Albert. Dickens smiles to himself.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Will these new things last, he wonders? Time will show that Christmas cards and Christmas trees are here to stay. As is the new book that Dickens himself has just published. His gaze is drawn to a copy lying on the mantelpiece. It's a ghost story, but with this message of redemption and hope, it's also a ghostly reflection of the human soul. It sold out its first print run two days ago, less than a week after it was released. It's called "A Christmas Carol".

• 3:41Speaker 01

  It'll go on to become a festive tradition all of its own, as successive generations gather close to listen in the flickering candlelight. And it's the first in a selection of remarkable ghost stories written by Dickens that I'll be reading to you in the coming weeks. I'm David Suchet, and from the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Charles Dickens' Ghost Stories.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  The version of A Christmas Carol that I'll be reading today isn't quite the same as the one Dickens wrote in the winter of 1843. It's a version that he personally abridged and performed on stage to rave reviews. And so wildly successful were his live performances in Britain and America, that this almost became the true Christmas Carol, as Dickens saw it.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  The original and best Christmas ghost story, as the author loved to tell it. So let's begin. This is A Christmas Carol, Part One.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Marley was dead, to begin with. There's no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it, and Scrooge's name was a good upon change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for, oh, I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, his sole mourner. Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name, however. There, it yet stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door. Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley. He answered to both names. I was all the same to him.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone with Scrooge. A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  External heat and cold had little influence on him. No warmth could warm, no cold could chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he. No falling snow was more intent upon its purpose. No pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain and snow and hail and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often came down handsomely, and Scrooge never did. Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say with gladsome looks,

• 7:14Speaker 01

  "My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle. No children asked him what it was o'clock. No man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place of Scrooge. Even the blind man's dogs appeared to know him, and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts, and then would wag their tails as though they said, "Oh, no eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master." But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked,

• 7:57Speaker 01

  to edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call nuts to Scrooge.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Once upon a time of all the good days in the year, upon a Christmas Eve, old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. Oh, it was cold, bleak, biting, foggy weather, and the city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already. The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open, that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who, in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room. And so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter and tried to warm himself at the candle, in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  "A merry Christmas, uncle, God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation Scrooge had of his approach. "Bah!" said Scrooge, "humbug." "Christmas, a humbug, uncle, you don't mean that, I'm sure." "I do. Out upon merry Christmas. What's Christmas-time to you but a time of paying bills without money? A time for finding yourself a year older and not an hour richer? A time for balancing your books and having every item in them through a round dozen months presented dead against you?

• 10:06Speaker 01

  If I had my will, every idiot who goes about with merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a snake of holly through his heart. He shote!" "Uncle!" "Deaf you! Keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mine." "Keep it, but you don't keep it. Let me leave it alone, then." Much good may it do you, much good as it ever done you! Well, there are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I'm not profited, I dare say, Christmas among the rest. But I'm sure I've always thought of Christmas time when it has come round, apart from the veneration due to its sacred origin, if anything belonged to it, called me apart from that,

• 10:51Speaker 01

  as a good time, a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time. The only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem, by one consent, to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow travellers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Uncle, though it's never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good and will do me good, and I say, "God bless it!"

• 11:34Speaker 01

  The clerk, in the tank, involuntarily applauded. "Ah, let me hear another sound from you," said Scrooge, "and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation." "Hmm, you're quite a powerful speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder you don't go into Parliament?" "Oh, don't be angry, Uncle. Come, dine with us tomorrow." Scrooge said that he would see him, yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression and said that he would see him in that extremity first. "But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why? Why did you get married?"

• 12:17Speaker 01

  "Be- because I fell in love." "Because you fell in love," growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. "Good afternoon." "N- Uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it a reason for not coming now?" "Good afternoon." "But, I want nothing from you. I ask nothing of you."

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Why cannot we be friends? Good afternoon! I'm sorry with all my heart to find you so resolute. We've never had any quarrel to which I've been a party, but I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So, a merry Christmas, uncle. Good afternoon! And a happy new year! Good afternoon!

• 13:16Speaker 01

  His nephew left the room without an angry word notwithstanding. The clerk, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood with their hats off in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their hands and bowed to him.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  "Scrooge and Marley's, I believe", said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. "H- have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge or Mr. Marley?" "Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years. He died seven years ago, this very night!" "Oh, well, at this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge", said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at this present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries,

• 14:22Speaker 01

  hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir." "Are there no prisons?" "Plenty of prisons, but under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the unoffending multitude, a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink and means of warmth. We choose this time because it is a time of all others, when want is keenly felt and abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?" "Nothing!" "Ah, you wish to be anonymous?"

• 15:08Speaker 01

  "I wish to be left alone!" Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the prisons and the workhouses. They cost enough. And those who are badly off must go there. Well, many can't go there, and many would rather die. If they would rather die, they'd better do it and decrease the surplus population.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  At length, the hour of shutting up the counting house arrived. With an ill will, Scrooge, dismounting from his stool, tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out and put on his hat. Hmm, you'll want all day to borrow, I suppose? Well, it's quite convenient, sir. It's not convenient and it's not fair. If I was to stop half a crowd for it, you'd think yourself mighty ill-used. I'll be bound. Oh, yes, sir. And yet you don't think me ill-used when I pay a day's wages for no work? Well, it's only once a year, sir.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December. Ah, but I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning. The clerk promised that he would, and Scrooge walked out with a growl.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist, for he boasted no great coat, went down a slide at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times in honour of it being Christmas Eve, and then ran home as hard as he could pelt to play a blind man's buff.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern, and having read all the newspapers and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker's book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which at once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms in a lowering pile of buildings up a yard. The building was old enough now and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. Now, it is a fact that there was nothing at all particular

• 18:03Speaker 01

  about the knocker on the door of this house, except that it was very large. Also, that Scrooge had seen it night and morning during his whole residence in that place. Also, that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London. And yet, Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change, not a knocker,

• 18:39Speaker 01

  but Marley's face.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Marley's face! With a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but it looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look, with ghostly spectacles turned up upon its ghostly forehead. As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again. He said, and closed the door with a bang.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  The sound resounded through the house like thunder.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Every room above and every cask in the wine merchant's cellar below appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door and walked across the hall and up the stairs. Slowly, too, trimming his candle as he went. Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for its being very dark. Well, darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. Well, he had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that. Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room, all as they should be.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa. A small fire in the grate, spoon and basin, ready, and the little saucepan of gruel, while Scrooge had a cold in his head, upon the hob. Nobody under the bed, nobody in the closet, nobody in his dressing gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room, as usual, old fire-guard, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker. Quite satisfied, he closed his door and locked himself in.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  A double locked himself in, which was not his custom.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Thus, secured against surprise, he took off his cravat, put on his dressing-gown and slippers and his nightcap, and sat down before the very low fire to take his gruel.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell that hung in the room and communicated, for some purpose now forgotten, with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment and with a strange, inexplicable dread that, as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  This was succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below, as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over casks in the wine merchant's cellar.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below. Then coming up the stairs.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Then coming straight towards his door.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  It came on through the heavy door, and a spectre passed into the room before his eyes. And upon its coming in, the dying flame leapt up as though it cried: "I know him, Marley's ghost."

• 22:36Speaker 01

  The same thing, the very same. Marley, in his pigtails, usual waistcoat, tights and boots. His body was transparent, so that Scrooge, observing him and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind him. Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he'd never believed it, until now. No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through and saw it standing before him, though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes, and noticed the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin,

• 23:22Speaker 01

  he was still incredulous. "How dull," said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. "What do you want this being?" "Much."

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Marley's voice, no doubt about it. Who are you? Ask me who I was. Well, who were you then? In life, I was your partner, Jacob Marley. Can you... Can you sit down? I can. Do it then. Scrooge asked the question because he didn't know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in the condition to take a chair, and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it. You don't believe in me? I don't.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses? I don't know. Well, why do you doubt your senses? Because a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in his heart by any means waggish then. The truth is that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention and keeping down his horror. But how much greater was his horror when the phantom, taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast? Oh, mercy, dreadful apparition! Why do you trouble me? Why do spirits walk the earth? And why do they come to me? It is required of every man

• 25:34Speaker 01

  that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men and travel far and wide. And if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. I cannot tell you all I would. A very little more is permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger. Anywhere.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house. Mark me, in life my spirit never roved, beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole. And weary journeys lie before me. Seven years dead and travelling all the time?

• 26:20Speaker 01

  You travel fast? On the wings of the wind. Why, you might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years! Oh, blind man, blind man! Not to know that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret

• 27:04Speaker 01

  can make amends for one life's opportunities misused. Yet I was like this man. I once was like this man. But you were always a good man of business, Jacob! Faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. Business? cried the ghost, wringing its hands again. Man-kind was my business. The common welfare was my business. Charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water

• 27:48Speaker 01

  in the comprehensive ocean of my business.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly. Hear me, my time is nearly gone. I, I, I will, but, but don't be hard upon me, don't be flowery, Jacob, pray. I'm here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring Ebenezer. But you were always a good friend to me, thank you. You will be haunted by three spirits.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Uh, is, is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob? But, but, you know, I, I think I'd rather not. Without their visits, you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow night when the bell tolls one. Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night, when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more. And look that for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  It walked backward from him, and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the apparition reached it, it was wide open.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  The spectre floated out upon the bleak, dark night.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Scrooge closed the window and examined the door by which the ghost had entered.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  It was double locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. Scrooge tried to say

• 30:13Speaker 01

  humbug, but stopped at the first syllable. And being from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpses of the invisible world, or the dull conversation of the ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose, he went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep on the instant.

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• 32:19Speaker 01

  When Scrooge awoke, it was so dark that, looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber, until, suddenly, the church clock told a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy "one". Light flashed up in the room, upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn aside by a strange figure, like a child. Yet not so like a child, as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium,

• 33:04Speaker 01

  which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view and being diminished to a child's proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white, as if with age, and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it. And the tenderest bloom was on the skin. It held a branch of fresh, green holly in its hand, and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright, clear jet of light,

• 33:48Speaker 01

  by which all this was visible, and which was doubtless the occasion of its using in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap which it now held under its arm. Are you the spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold me? I am. Who and what are you? I am the ghost of Christmas past. Long past? No, your past. The things that you will see with me are shadows of the things that have been. They will have no consciousness of us.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Scrooge then made bold to inquire what business brought him here. Your welfare!

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Rise and walk with me!

• 34:49Speaker 01

  It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes. That bed was warm and the thermometer a long way below freezing, that he was clad but lightly in his slippers, dressing gown and nightcap, and that he had a cold upon him at that time.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  The grasp, so gentle as a woman's hand, was not to be resisted. He rose, but finding that the spirit made toward the window clasped its robe in supplication. I'm a mortal and liable to fall! Bear but a touch of my hand there, said the spirit, laying it upon its heart. And you shall be upheld in more than this. As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall

• 35:53Speaker 01

  and stood in the busy thoroughfares of a city. It was made plain enough by the dressing of the shops that here too it was Christmas time. The ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door and asked Scrooge if he knew it. Know it? Was I apprenticed here? They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh wig, sitting behind such a high desk that if he had been two inches taller he must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement. Why, it's old Fezziwig! Oh bless his heart, it is Fezziwig! Alive again!

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Old Fezziwig laid down his pen and looked up at the clock which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands, adjusted his capacious waistcoat, laughed all over himself, from his shoes to his organ of benevolence, and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice: "Yee-haw there, Ebenezer, Dick!" A living and moving picture of Scrooge's former self. A young man came briskly in, accompanied by his fellow apprentice. "Dick Wilkins, to be sure," said Scrooge to the ghost.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  "My old fellow apprentice, bless me, yes, there he is. He was very much attached to me, was Dick. Oh, oh, poor Dick, dear, dear." "Yee-haw, my boys," said Fezziwig. "No more work tonight, Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer. Let's have the shutters up before a man can say Jack Robinson. Ah, clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room here." Clear away? There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared away or couldn't have cleared away with old Fezziwig looking on. Ah, it was done in a minute.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life forevermore. The floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire, and the warehouse was as snug and warm and dry and bright a ballroom as you would desire to see upon a winter's night. In came a fiddler with a music book, and went up to the lofty desk and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomachaches.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers, whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid with her cousin the baker. In came the cook with her brother's particular friend, the milkman. In they all came, one after another. Some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling. In they all came, anyhow and everyhow.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Away they all went, twenty couples at once. Hands half round and back again the other way, down the middle and up again, round and round in various stages of affection, a grouping. Old top couple always turning up in the wrong place, new top couple starting off again as soon as they got there. All top couples at last and not a bottom one to help them. And when this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out: "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Well done!"

• 40:07Speaker 01

  And the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially provided for that purpose.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances. And there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of cold roast. And there was a great piece of cold boiled. And there were mince pies and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came after the roast and boiled, when the fiddler struck up, Sir Roger de Caverly.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple too! With a good stiff piece of work cut out for them, three or four and twenty pair of partners, people who were not to be trifled with, people who would dance and had no notion of walking. But if they had been twice as many, four times, old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, ah, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part of the dance.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  You couldn't have predicted at any given time what would become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance, "advance and retire, turn your partner bow and curtsey, corkscrew, thread the needle, and back again to your place", Fezziwig cut off, cut so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side the door, and shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  When everybody had retired, but the two prentice- They did the same to them. And thus the cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left to their beds, which were under a counter in the back shop.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  It's all matter, said the ghost, to make these silly folks so full of gratitude. He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money, three or four, perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise? It isn't that, said Scrooge, heated by the remark and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter self. It isn't that, spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy, to make our service light or burdensome, a pleasure or a toil.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Say that his power lies in words and looks, in things so slight and insignificant that it's impossible to add and count them up. What then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune. He felt the spirit's glance and stopped. What is the matter? Nothing particular. Something, I think. No, no, I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now. That's all.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  My time grows short, observed the spirit. Quick!

• 44:36Speaker 01

  This was not addressed to Scrooge or to anyone whom he could see, but it produced an immediate effect, for again he saw himself. He was older now, a man in the prime of life. He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a black dress, in whose eyes there were tears. It matters little, she said softly to Scrooge's former self. To you, very little.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Another idol has displaced me, and if it can comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve. But what idol has displaced you? A golden one. Oh, you fear the world too much. I've seen your noble aspirations fall off one by one, until the master passion gain engrosses you, have I not? What then? Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I'm not changed towards you. Have I ever sought release from our engagement? In words, never. In what then?

• 45:53Speaker 01

  In a changed nature, in an altered spirit, in another atmosphere of life, another hope as its great end. If you were free today, tomorrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would not choose a dourless girl? Or choosing her, do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow? I do, and I release you with a full heart

• 46:28Speaker 01

  for the love of him you once were.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Spirit, remove me from this place. I told you these were shadows of the things that have been, said the ghost. That they are what they are. Do not blame me.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Remove me, Scrooge exclaimed. I cannot bear it. Leave me, take me back, haunt me no longer. As he struggled with the spirit, he was conscious of being exhausted and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness, and further of being in his own bedroom. He had barely time to reel to bed before he sank into a heavy sleep.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  In the next episode, in the second and final part of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is visited by two more spirits, the ghosts of Christmas present and Christmas yet to come. But as the old miser comes face to face with his own mortality, is it too late for him to mend his ways and seek redemption?

• 48:06Speaker 01

  That's next time on Charles Dickens' Ghost Stories.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  You can listen to part two of A Christmas Carol over on the Charles Dickens Ghost Stories podcast right away. Search for Charles Dickens Ghost Stories on your podcast app and hit follow for more spine-tingling tales. Or head to www.noiser.com.

• 48:37Speaker 05

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